For identical twin sisters Lauren and Liz, growing up in Park City meant interacting with travelers and neighbors from across the globe. "Park City is a melting pot of people from all over the world," says Liz. "We were exposed to so many different kinds of cuisines at an early age." That early exposure was compounded by a tradition of wonderful cooks at home. "We were surrounded by great homemade food," Lauren shares. "But when I got to college, I was shocked at how many people didn't have the foundations of cooking - buying store bought items or not even knowing how to cook chicken." Lauren saw this as an opportunity to educate and help her peers experience what homemade cooking has to offer. "I wanted to show people who are intimidated by cooking that it's cheaper and better to make things from scratch - so I started a blog and called it Tastes Better From Scratch," she says.
Lauren started posting content on the blog in 2009, but didn't realize how popular it had become until her sister-in-law introduced her to Google Analytics. "We saw that I was getting thousands of visitors per month," Lauren recalls. "And she said to me ‘I think you can make money from this.'" So in 2014, Lauren took a leap of faith. She worked tenaciously over time to grow her traffic and post new content. And began using Google AdSense to monetize her content with ads, eventually transitioning to AdThrive, a Google Certified Publishing Partner. "We started making money about a year into it," she says. "And by 2017 we were making six figures in ad revenue."
